My granddaughter and I…
used to play the board game The Game of Life. My favorite part was choosing a career.
The first step of the game is to choose between two different options: College career or career. I always chose college mostly because my grand daughter was watching. The one hundred thousand dollars awarded after graduating was a nice incentive as well. Not to mention that the careers for college were better.
My preferred professions were inventor and secret agent.
How easy it was. Not like the real game of life.
I mean, what if you don’t have the skills or opportunities to be an inventor or a secret agent? What if you didn’t know the right people, have the right connections, or the finances for an education or to start a business?
It didn’t matter in The Game of Life.
A Gamble or a Choice?
After college family followed. However, neither marriage nor children were a choice. It was the next step. The number of children you would have depended on what you rolled.
Home ownership followed. Purchasing a home was dependent on landing in the right space. You could choose to pass on purchasing a home or buy. To buy you would pull two cards and choose from those two choices granted you had enough to purchase the home that you chose.
It wasn’t if you won or lost. Rather, it was everything along the way. Which all translated into who had the most fulfilled life with career, home, and family.
The game was based on traditional choices. That meant limited options. In the game you chose what you were expected to choose (marriage) or accepted what life chose for you (children)
My Life
In real life there are a plethora of careers to choose from, paths that you can take, and decisions to make.
That was the game’s appeal. It was much easier to choose from a small pot. The other side of that coin was the expectation and lack of choice.
There was no question whether you were to be married. The only option was to choose your gender. I don’t think the game was designed for this, but we wanted to shake things up a bit, Lol.
With the question of parenthood, it was something to simply be accepted. Depending on what you rolled you could have two, ten, or zero children.
That’s how I felt after I graduated from high school. Limited in my choices and lacking the skills necessary to see the big picture. I was unknowingly used to living within this small space where my life could only be this or that.
In retrospect I can see that my parents were trying to guide me. And it wasn’t’ that they didn’t trust me to make my own decisions. It was that they wanted me to make the decisions that they would make.
My parents challenged my right to choose which took away my ability to choose.
Who You Are Was Always There
My big sister is a great example of how what you will become is evident in who you are.
At the first sign of a little wiggle in one of my baby teeth, my sister tried to pull it out. The old string tied to the loose tooth and the other end tied to a doorknob trick, Lol. She is now an assistant and anesthesia specialist to a pediatric dentist.
I, myself, have always been a dreamer. I yearned for adventures. Aspired to be bold and brave, hoped to be intelligent, and I prayed to be beautiful.
Unfortunately, those around me would remind me that I wasn’t any of those things.
I didn’t know that I could nurture those longings within myself. And that if I didn’t possess something innately, I could learn.
According to my parents, my sister’s interests were sensible. Mine were foolishness. They did not understand me. So, they tried to change me into something that they felt they could.
All a child needs are the guidance and acceptance and support to be themselves.
Not sure who you are? Take a moment to think back to what you were discouraged from or pushed toward.
Little clues will have big answers.
“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.”
Chinese Proverb
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